Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu wants negotiations with the Palestinians to continue for decades
to come. But the Palestinian leadership would be foolish to go along with
this charade.

When I was a child in Baghdad, we had a special Assyrian holiday for kids
called Nusardil. As part of the celebrations, everyone throws water at each
other, symbolizing baptism. The goal is to run away quickly enough to avoid
getting wet.

The year I turned six, an adult friend asked me to bring him a glass of water.
When I did, he threw the water in my face. Everyone laughed. He asked me again
to bring him water, assuring me that this time he would throw it at someone
else. But you guessed it  he threw the water right at me again. By the third
time he asked me for a glass of water, I had learned my lesson. I threw the
water in his face and ran for my life.

The Palestinian leadership has had water thrown in its face by the Israelis
dozens of times in the past 40 years. In every round of negotiations, the
United States assures the Palestinians that this time it will be different,
but inevitably they walk away soaking wet. Yet the Palestinian leadership
keeps going back for more.

It’s time for a change. It’s time to let negotiations go, and find other
means of achieving Palestinian rights and statehood.

The Current Situation

The situation for Palestinians has reached dire straits.

Palestinians suffer from lack of sovereignty, lack of resources, and abject
poverty. A million and a half Arabs live as second-class citizens in Israel.
Another 1.5 million suffer in an open-air prison in Gaza, and 2 million more
live under occupation in the West Bank  an occupation maintained with the help
of the United States and the collaboration of a Palestinian government.

Meanwhile, the Israelis are riding high. The United
Nations classifies Israel as having “Very High Human Development”  it
ranks 16th among 186 nations. With a very strong military, Israel has little
to fear in terms of external attacks, particularly with its undeclared nuclear
arsenal. Despite some nominal differences over settlements, the U.S. president
and members of Congress from both parties, many of them insisting that the
West Bank isn’t even under occupation, repeatedly reiterate their ongoing
support of Israel.

For their part, the Palestinians are divided and fighting among themselves.
The Palestinian Authority, with its leaders serving on long past their term
limits, is illegitimate. Reliant on foreign assistance and Israel’s willingness
to let its funds through, the Authority complies with US policies to gain
access to a measly few hundred million dollars a year. Meanwhile, regional
support has been slim as Arab countries have dealt with their own internal
strife.

Despite the fact that the broker in these negotiations  the United States  is
on the side of Israel on nearly every major question, the Palestinian leadership
still hopes for the best. It wants an agreement that will stop settlement
building, send Israel back to its 1967 borders, establish East Jerusalem as
the capital of Palestine, enact the right of return or compensation for Palestinian
refugees and their descendants, and enable Palestinians to run their own affairs.

In contrast, right-wing
Israeli politicians  many of them in the leadership of Netanyahu’s government  are
floating the idea of not creating a Palestinian state at all. Rather, they
propose annexing the most important portions of the West Bank  leaving
many Palestinians permanently stateless in an overtly apartheid arrangement  and
making Jerusalem a permanently undivided city for Israelis only.

The two sides are not exactly close together. And while the Palestinian leadership
lacks the legitimacy to compromise anymore than it already has, the Israeli
leadership lacks any incentive.

The push for negotiations is spurred forward by a cottage industry of foreign
policy professionals who still believe that Washington has not only the ability
but also the willingness to negotiate a just and acceptable settlement. The
negotiation industry, at times backed by very well-intentioned people, keeps
the drumbeat of hope alive and says that talks are preferable to what it claims
is the only other alternative: war.

Palestinian leaders, along with most everyone else in the region, seem to
agree that there will be no military solution to the conflict. But the alternative
to war is not necessarily negotiations  not if it means negotiating while
the Israelis openly confiscate Palestinian land by settling over half a million
Israelis on it. Or negotiating despite the fact that the majority
of both Palestinians and Israelis have little faith that this round of talks
will succeed.

It’s time for the Palestinians to make sure they do not aid in perpetuating
this charade of endless negotiations for decades more.

Ways Forward

The status quo is unsustainable, and when the United States is no longer
a superpower, Israel’s impunity will be much less assured. As Ian
Lustick stated recently in the New YorkTimes, “many Israelis
see the demise of the country as not just possible, but probable. The State
of Israel has been established, not its permanence.” Lustick reminded the
Israelis that the “Soviet, Pahlavi Iranian, apartheid South African, Ba’athist
Iraqi, and Yugoslavian states unraveled,” and so too could Israel collapse
under the weight of its own injustices.

In the meantime, what are the options? For one thing, the Palestinians can
exercise peaceful demonstrations, engage in hunger strikes, and use international
forums to further isolate Israel.

Meanwhile, the Israelis may be doing a fine job of isolating themselves:
the United States is almost the only friend Israel has, and Israel is abusing
the friendship. Netanyahu’s government wants to go to war with Iran
and has been pressing Washington hard to do the same, contrary
to US interests. That move risks alienating Washington and eroding one
of Israel’s chief pillars of support, although this is unlikely to happen
anytime soon.

The Palestinians are at an important juncture in their history. Through nonviolent
resistance and further appeals to international law and institutions  not through
a hollow “negotiation” process that puts a veneer of legitimacy on the slow
erosion of historic Palestine  the Palestinian struggle for statehood must
continue.

On the home front, Palestinians need to get rid of Mahmoud Abbas and the
coterie of other leaders who are jaded by their comfort. And they should redouble
their efforts to enlist world opinion by exposing Israel’s virtual enslavement
of 5 million Palestinians, which is contrary to the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights and an anathema to the world conscience in the 21st century.

Can't understand why Abbas is still in charge, he has no fight left in him and should just go away quietly, or have him remove by force by the Palestinian people.

die Wahrheit zählt

I totally agree with this article, these negotiations are fake, allowing Israel steal more land, and the Palastinians need to re-think their strategy. They need [1] unity, not division between Hamas (which the Israelis helped found) and Fatah, but the Fatah leadership and the collaborators need to be dispensed with [2] peaceful resistance and civil disobediance, [3] stop supplying labour for the illegal Israeli settlements, [4] use international forums, the UN and international courts, to confront Israel [5] lobby more successfully in the US, Europe (especially Germany, Britain, France, all of which have influential Zionist lobbies), Russia, China (all these countries of course have their own wars and abuses of rights, and what these countries allow Israel do in Gaza and the West Bank is just incredible), [5] for this they need money, they may have to take this from their FALSE friends in other Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia, [6] engage with Jews from other countries and attempt to bring them on their side, not all Jews are Zionists.

Israel has few friends, but those they have are powerful, in particular US, Germany, France, Britain, and this is where the Palastinians need to be active. That Israel needs to be continually reassured of it's "right to exist" and the "support" of Washington shows just how vulnerable it is. Hopefully the Iranian situtation will play out to the benefit of Palastinians, but the other side of that coin is the change taking place where Israel and Saudi Arabia see a convergence of their interests. This so-called Arab Spring is nonsense because it's been hijacked by western interests, look at Egypt and Libya, but even the Cairo Washington "friendship" is cooling, and all the turmoil in Libya, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Gaza, West Bank etc. is a perfect backdrop allowing Israel proceed with it's criminality unpunished and largely unseen. It allows the west and Israel portray all those Muslims as terrorists and excuses the crimes and aggression of the west and Israel as being defensive in nature, which they're not.

omop

According to a British website changes are happening in Europe….

French Jews Flee Anti-Semitism, Muslim Extremism

A European Union report indicated many European Jews try to hide their identity.

Mark Thomason

Palestinian rights? Certainly. Statehood? This charade has gone on too long for that, as was intended by the Israelis.

Rights must be protected without a state. There are several ways to imagine that, but none of them involve this charade.